When I first got back from Iraq a year ago I had some money and decided I wanted to learn to play an instrument. After some consideration I decided upon the violin. Now here comes where I'm having problems, the only violin teacher in town has been booked for a long long time. Now I have been looking around on the internet for lessons and have been following what I've found to the letter...yet I can't even get my violin to make sounds close to what its supposed to do. Is it possible my violin is faulty? Is there some way I can check to make sure its functional? I've tried to tune it in accordance with a couple lessons I've come across and no matter what I do it doesn't want to make sound other than some scratching noises when i slide the bow across it! I applied the resin that came with the violin per the instructions and that has not helped either. Please help lol, I'm feeling kinda dumb here but I'm not giving up, I want to play this beast.

When you are using a new bow for the first time you need to apply LOTS of rosin. When i got my first violin, before having my first class i also thought my violin was broken since i could not get a nice sound from it. My teacher then put a lot of rosin and the sound completely changed. Try doing that.
You may also want to get someone to tune your violin since it can be somewhat hard to do the first time.
Good luck!

from a beginners point of view, the violin is not an instrument you can teach yourself(unlike the piano or guitar).you really need to get somebody to show you how to hold the bow and make a decent sound.it does not have to be an official teacher.even somebody who has been playing a few years will do.the basics are so important and you must get them right from the start.

I have only been playing for about two years. Be sure you are playing somewhere between the finger board and the bridge and not too close to either one. That can also cause a raspy sound. To find a good instructor, you might have to go to a neighboring city. Currently I drive about 30 miles for 30 minutes each week during the months of June and July 2007. Then I go back to school in August when my schedule will no longer allow me to take lessons, but next summer I plan to take lessons again. My teacher is going to give me things to work on during the school year. I figure that some lessons are better than none at all. It is amazing what I have learned during the month of June. I hope this helps.

The lots of rosin idea really helped! I have sound now woohoo! Seemed like it wasn't actually getting onto the bow at all so I took some sand paper and powdered it down a bit. Is it supposed to be a big hard rock type substance?

yes, rosin is supposed to be a big hard block(unless you leave it on the dashboard of your car in the sun !) music shops often keep a tin of powdered rosin which they use for new bows.it is just the block of rosin ground up to powder.not necessary,
but makes it easy to get started with the new bow.